PROMOTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF REFLECTIVE TEACHING SKILLS IN PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS IN NIGERIA

Research in recent years has highlighted the role of reflective teaching practice in improving teaching effectiveness and in contributing to the professional development of teachers in each of the constituent areas of teacher education such as knowledge, skills, attitudes and awareness. This is particularly important in science classrooms which are activity based and encourage students to actively control and take charge of their learning. Therefore, teachers must be properly prepared and equipped to provide vibrant environments for students to learn science. This can be achieved when they are encouraged to practice reflective teaching.
Reflective teaching involves subjecting teachers’ beliefs , attitude and assumptions about classroom practice to critical analysis and evaluation. It deals with a critical examination of a teacher’s motivation, thinking and practice. Therefore a reflective teacher examines what she/he does in the classroom, considers why it is done and if it works . The infomation gathered from this type of analysis can be used to explore her/his teaching practices , beliefs and motivation which may result in improvements in teaching and enhance general professional development.

In acknowledgement of the benefits accruing from such reflections, many countries have incorporated reflective teaching practices as part of their teacher preparation programmes, or as preconditions for teachers to be awarded ‘qualified teacher status’. However in Nigeria, not much has been accomplished in the way of a formal incorporation of reflective teaching in the teacher education curriculum neither is there a systematic involvement of teachers in carrying out reflections both during their preparation for teaching in higher institutions of learning and when they finally go to classrooms to teach. In addition, a few researches have indicated that some teachers are unaware of reflective teaching, and so do not reflect on their classroom practice while some experienced teachers carry out reflections by default. This has limited the classroom practice of many teachers and narrowed avenues for their professional development. The need to conciously prepare teachers to be sucessful reflective practitioners has given impetus to this research.

This study therefore involved the use of a multi-strategy approach involving micro-teaching, journal writing and, focus group discussions to promote the development of reflective teaching skills in a group of pre-service science teachers in a higher institution of learning prior to their professional practice period in schools. The exposure to each of these activities came after a baseline had been established based on an observation of their classroom performance. This observation will be repeated after the professional practice period. It is hoped that this exposure will help teachers develop the relevant skills to enable them practice reflective teaching and in the process they will develop knowledge and theories of teaching as a component of lifelong learning in their professional development.